Haruki Murakami - Norwegian Wood

between a late breakfast or an early lunch. Same time, same food, different name.\" Now Hatsumi spoke to Nagasawa. \"Don't you care whether I understand you or not?\" \"You don't get it, do you? Person A understands Person B because the time is right for that to happen, not because Person B wants to be understood by Person A.\" \"So is it a mistake for me to feel that I want to be understood by someone - by you, for example?\" \"No, it's not a mistake,\" answered Nagasawa. \"Most people would call that love, if you think you want to understand me. My system for living is way different from other people's systems for living.\" \"So what you're saying is you're not in love with me, is that it?\" \"Well, my system and your - \" \"To hell with your fucking system!\" Hatsumi shouted. That was the first and last time I ever heard her shout. Nagasawa pushed the button by the table, and the waiter came in with the bill. Nagasawa handed him a credit card. \"Sorry about this, Watanabe,\" said Nagasawa. \"I'm going to see Hatsumi home. You go back to the dorm alone, OK?\" \"You don't have to apologize to me. Great meal,\" I said, but no one said anything in response. The waiter brought the card, and Nagasawa signed with a ballpoint pen after checking the amount. Then the three of us stood and went outside. Nagasawa started to step into the street to hail a taxi, but Hatsumi stopped him. \"Thanks, but I don't want to spend any more time with you today. You don't have to see me home. Thank you for dinner.\" ,,Whatever,\" said Nagasawa. \"I want Toru to see me home.\" \"Whatever,\" said Nagasawa. \"But Watanabe's practically the same as me. He may be a nice guy, but deep down in his heart he's incapable 251

of loving anybody. There's always some part of him somewhere that's wide awake and detached. He just has that hunger that won't go away. Believe me, I know what I'm talking about.\" I flagged down a taxi and let Hatsumi in first. \"Anyway,\" I said to Nagasawa, \"I'll make sure she gets home.\" \"Sorry to put you through this,\" said Nagasawa, but I could see that he was already thinking about something else. Once inside the cab, I asked Hatsumi, \"Where do you want to go? Back to Ebisu?\" Her flat was in Ebisu. She shook her head. \"OK. How about a drink somewhere?\" \"Yes,\" she said with a nod. \"Shibuya,\" I told the driver. Folding her arms and closing her eyes, Hatsumi sank back into the corner of the seat. Her small gold earrings caught the light as the taxi swayed. Her midnight-blue dress seemed to have been made to match the darkness of the interior. Every now and then her lightly made-up, beautifully formed lips would quiver slightly as though she had caught herself on the verge of talking to herself. Watching her, I could see why Nagasawa had chosen her as his special companion. There were any number of women more beautiful than Hatsumi, and Nagasawa could have made any of them his. But Hatsumi had some quality that could send a tremor through your heart. It was nothing forceful. The power she exerted was a subtle thing, but it called forth deep resonances. I watched her all the way to Shibuya, and wondered, without ever finding an answer, what this emotional reverberation could be that I was feeling. It finally hit me some dozen or so years later. I had gone to Santa Fe to interview a painter and was sitting in a local pizza parlour, drinking beer and eating pizza and watching a miraculously beautiful sunset. Everything was soaked in brilliant red - my hand, the plate, the table, 252

the world - as if some special kind of fruit juice had splashed down on everything. In the midst of this overwhelming sunset, the image of Hatsumi flashed into my mind, and in that moment I understood what that tremor of the heart had been. It was a kind of childhood longing that had always remained - and would for ever remain - unfulfilled. I had forgotten the existence of such innocent, almost burnt-in longing: forgotten for years that such feelings had ever existed inside me. What Hatsumi had stirred in me was a part of my very self that had long lain dormant. And when the realization struck me, it aroused such sorrow I almost burst into tears. She had been an absolutely special woman. Someone should have done something - anything - to save her. But neither Nagasawa nor I could have managed that. As so many of those I knew had done, Hatsumi reached a certain stage in life and decided - almost on the spur of the moment - to end it. Two years after Nagasawa left for Germany, she married, and two years after that she slashed her wrists with a razor blade. It was Nagasawa, of course, who told me what had happened. His letter from Bonn said this: \"Hatsumi's death has extinguished something. This is unbearably sad and painful, even to me.\" I ripped his letter to shreds and threw it away. I never wrote to him again. Hatsumi and I went to a small bar and downed several drinks. Neither of us said much. Like a bored, old married couple, we sat opposite each other, drinking in silence and munching peanuts. When the place began to fill up, we went for a walk. Hatsumi said she would pay the bill, but I insisted on paying because the drinks had been my idea. There was a deep chill in the night air. Hatsumi wrapped herself in her pale grey cardigan and walked by my side in silence. I had no destination in mind as we ambled through the nighttime streets, my hands shoved deep into my pockets. This was just like walking with Naoko, it occurred to me. 253

\"Do you know somewhere we could play pool around here?\" Hatsumi asked me without warning. \"Pool? You play?\" \"Yeah, I'm pretty good. How about you?\" \"I play a little. Not that I'm very good at it.\" \"OK, then. Let's go.\" We found a pool hall nearby and went in. It was a small place at the far end of an alley. The two of us - Hatsumi in her chic dress and I in my blue blazer and regimental tie - clashed with the scruffy pool hall, but this didn't seem to concern Hatsumi at all as she chose and chalked her cue. She pulled a hairslide from her bag and clipped her hair aside at one temple to keep it from interfering with her game. We played two games. Hatsumi was as good as she had claimed to be, while my own game was hampered by the thick bandage I still wore on my cut hand. She crushed me. \"You're great,\" I said in admiration. \"You mean appearances can be deceiving?\" she asked as she sized up a shot, smiling. \"Where did you learn to play like that?\" \"My grandfather - my father's father - was an old playboy. He had a table in his house. I used to play pool with my brother just for fun, and when I got a little bigger my grandfather taught me the right moves. He was a wonderful guy - stylish, handsome. He's dead now, though. He always used to boast how he once met Deanna Durbin in New York.\" She got three in a row, then missed on the fourth try. I managed to squeeze out a point, then missed an easy shot. \"It's the bandage,\" said Hatsumi to comfort me. \"No, it's because I haven't played for so long,\" I said. \"Two years and five months.\" \"How can you be so sure of the time?\" 254

\"My friend died the night after our last game together,\" I said. \"So you stopped playing?\" \"No, not really,\" I said after giving it some thought. \"I just never had the opportunity to play after that. That's all.\" \"How did your friend die?\" \"Traffic accident.\" She made several more shots, aiming with deadly seriousness and adjusting the strength of each shot with precision. Watching her in action - her carefully set hair swept back out of her eyes, golden earrings sparkling, court shoes set firmly on the floor, lovely, slender fingers pressing the green baize as she took her shot - I felt as if her side of the scruffy pool hall had been transformed into part of some elegant social event. I had never spent time with her alone before, and this was a marvellous experience for me, as though I had been drawn up to a higher plane of life. At the end of the third game - in which, of course, she crushed me again -my cut began to throb, and so we stopped playing. \"I'm sorry,\" she said with what seemed like genuine concern, \"I should never have suggested this.\" \"That's OK,\" I said. \"It's not a bad cut, I enjoyed playing. Really.\" As we were leaving the pool hall, the skinny woman owner said to Hatsumi, \"You've a good eye, sister.\" Hatsumi gave her a sweet smile and thanked her as she paid the bill. \"Does it hurt?\" she asked when we were outside. \"Not much,\" I said. \"Do you think it opened?\" \"No, it's probably OK.\" \"I know! You should come to my place. I'll change your bandage for you. I've got disinfectant and everything. Come on, I'm right over there.\" I told her it wasn't worth worrying about, that I'd be OK, but she insisted we had to check to see if the cut had opened or not. 255

\"Or is it that you don't like being with me? You want to go back to your room as soon as possible, is that it?\" she said with a playful smile. \"No way,\" I said. \"All right, then. Don't stand on ceremony. It's a short walk.\" Hatsumi's flat was a 15-minute walk from Shibuya towards Ebisu. By no means a glamorous building, it was more than decent, with a nice little lobby and a lift. Hatsumi sat me at the kitchen table and went to the bedroom to change. She came out wearing a Princeton hooded sweatshirt and cotton trousers - and no more gold earrings. Setting a first-aid box on the table, she undid my bandage, checked to see that the wound was still sealed, put a little disinfectant on the area and tied a new bandage over the cut. She did all this like an expert. \"How come you're so good at so many things?\" I asked. \"I used to do volunteer work at a hospital. Kind of like playing nurse. That's how I learned.\" When Hatsumi had finished with the bandage, she went and fetched two cans of beer from the fridge. She drank half of hers, and I drank mine plus the half she left. Then she showed me pictures of the other girls in her club. She was right: some of them were cute. \"Any time you decide you want a girlfriend, come to me,\" she said. \"I'll fix you up straight away.\" \"Yes, Miss.\" 'All right, Toru, tell me the truth. You think I'm an old matchmaker, don't you?\" \"To some extent,\" I said, telling her the truth, but with a smile. Hatsumi smiled, too. She looked good when she smiled. \"Tell me something else, Toru,\" she said. \"What do you think about Nagasawa and me?\" \"What do you mean what do I think? About what?\" \"About what I ought to do. From now on.\" \"It doesn't matter what I think,\" I said, taking a slug of cold beer. 256

\"That's all right. Tell me exactly what you think.\" \"Well, if I were you, I'd leave him. I'd find someone with a more normal way of looking at things and live happily ever after. There's no way in hell you can be happy with him. The way he lives, it never crosses his mind to try to make himself happy or to make others happy. Staying with him will only wreck your nervous system. To me, it's already a miracle that you've been with him three years. Of course, I'm very fond of him in my own way. He's fun, and he has lots of great qualities. He has strengths and abilities that I could never hope to match. But in the end, his ideas about things and the way he lives his life are not normal. Sometimes, when I'm talking to him, I feel as if I'm going around and around in circles. The same process that takes him higher and higher leaves me going around in circles. It makes me feel so empty! Finally, our very systems are totally different. Do you see what I'm saying?\" \"I do,\" Hatsumi said as she brought me another beer from the fridge. \"Plus, after he gets into the Foreign Ministry and does a year of training, he'll be going abroad. What are you going to do all that time? Wait for him? He has no intention of marrying anyone.\" \"I know that, too.\" \"So I've got nothing else to say.\" \"I see,\" said Hatsumi. I slowly filled my glass with beer. \"You know, when we were playing pool before, something popped into my mind,\" I said. \"I was an only child, but all the time I was growing up I never once felt deprived or wished I had brothers or sisters. I was happy being alone. But all of a sudden, playing pool with you, I had this feeling that I wished I had had an elder sister like you - really chic and a knockout in a midnight-blue dress and gold earrings and great with a pool cue.\" Hatsumi flashed me a happy smile. \"That's got to be the nicest thing 257

anybody's said to me in the past year,\" she said. \"Really.\" \"All I want for you,\" I said, blushing, \"is for you to be happy. It's crazy, though. You seem like someone who could be happy with just about anybody, so how did you end up with Nagasawa of all people?\" \"Things like that just happen. There's probably not much you can do about them. It's certainly true in my case. Of course, Nagasawa would say it's my responsibility, not his.' \"I'm sure he would.\" \"But anyway, Toru, I'm not the smartest girl in the world. If anything, I'm sort of on the stupid side, and old-fashioned. I couldn't care less about \"systems' and \"responsibility'. All I want is to get married and have a man I love hold me in his arms every night and make babies. That's plenty for me. It's all I want out of life.\" \"And what Nagasawa wants out of life has nothing to do with that.\" \"People change, though, don't you think?\" Hatsumi asked. \"You mean, like, they go out into society and get a kick up the arse and grow up?\" \"Yeah. And if he's away from me for a long time, his feelings for me could change, don't you think?\" \"Maybe, if he were an ordinary guy,\" I said. \"But he's different. He's incredibly strong-willed - stronger than you or I can imagine. And he only makes himself stronger with every day that goes by. If something smashes into him, he just works to make himself stronger. He'd eat slugs before he'd back down to anyone. What do you expect to get from a man like that?\" \"But there's nothing I can do but wait for him,\" said Hatsumi with her chin in her hand. \"You love him that much?\" \"I do,\" she answered without a moment's hesitation. \"Oh boy,\" I said with a sigh, drinking down the last of my beer. \"It must be a wonderful thing to be so sure that you love somebody.\" \"I'm a stupid, old-fashioned girl,\" she said. \"Have another beer?\" 258

\"No, thanks, I must get going. Thanks for the bandage and beer.\" As I was standing in the hallway putting on my shoes, the telephone rang. Hatsumi looked at me, looked at the phone, and looked at me again. \"Good night,\" I said, stepping outside. As I shut the door, I caught a glimpse of Hatsumi picking up the receiver. It was the last time I ever saw her. It was 11.30 by the time I got back to the dorm. I went straight to Nagasawa's room and knocked on his door. After the tenth knock it occurred to me that this was Saturday night. Nagasawa always got overnight permission on Saturday nights, supposedly to stay at his relatives' house. I went back to my room, took off my tie, put my jacket and trousers on a hanger, changed into my pyjamas, and brushed my teeth. Oh no, I thought, tomorrow is Sunday again! Sundays seemed to be rolling around every four days. Another two Sundays and I would be 20 years old. I stretched out in bed and stared at my calendar as dark feelings washed over me. I sat at my desk to write my Sunday morning letter to Naoko, drinking coffee from a big cup and listening to old Miles Davis albums. A fine rain was falling outside, while my room had the chill of an aquarium. The smell of mothballs lingered in the thick jumper I had just taken out of a storage box. High up on the window-pane clung a huge, fat fly, unmoving. With no wind to stir it, the Rising Sun standard hung limp against the flagpole like the toga of a Roman senator. A skinny, timid-looking brown dog that had wandered into the quadrangle was sniffing every blossom in the flowerbed. I couldn't begin to imagine why any dog would have to go around sniffing flowers on a rainy day. My letter was a long one, and whenever my cut right palm began to hurt from holding the pen, I would let my eyes wander out to the rainy 259

quadrangle. I began by telling Naoko how I had given my right hand a nasty cut while working in the record shop, then went on to say that Nagasawa, Hatsumi and I had had a sort of celebration the night before for Nagasawa's having passed his Foreign Ministry exam. I described the restaurant and the food. The meal was great, I said, but the atmosphere got uncomfortable halfway through. I wondered if I should write about Kizuki in connection with having played pool with Hatsumi and decided to go ahead. I felt it was something I ought to write about. I still remember the last shot Kizuki took that day - the day he died. It was a difficult cushion shot that I never expected him to get. Luck seemed to be with him, though: the shot was absolutely perfect, and the white and red balls hardly made a sound as they brushed each other on the green baize for the last score of the game. It was such a beautiful shot, I still have a vivid image of it to this day. For nearly two-and-a-half years after that, I never touched a cue. The night I played pool with Hatsumi, though, the thought of Kizuki never crossed my mind until the first game ended, and this came as a real shock to me. I had always assumed that I'd be reminded of Kizuki whenever I played pool. But not until the first game was over and I bought a Pepsi from a vending machine and started drinking it did I even think of him. It was the pool hall we used to play in, and we had often bet drinks on the outcome of our games. I felt guilty that I hadn't thought of Kizuki straight away, as if I had somehow abandoned him. Back in my room, though, I came to think of it like this: two and-a-half years have gone by since it happened, and Kizuki is still 17 years old. Not that this means my memory of him has faded. The things that his death gave rise to are still there, bright and clear, inside me, some of them even clearer than when they were new. What I want to say is this: I'm going to turn 20 soon. Part of 260

what Kizuki and I shared when we were 16 and 17 has already vanished, and no amount of crying is going to bring that back. I can't explain it any better than this, but I think that you can probably under- stand what I felt and what I am trying to say. In fact, you are probably the only one in the world who can understand. I think of you now more than ever. It's raining today. Rainy Sundays are hard for me. When it rains I can't do laundry, which means I can't do ironing. I can't go walking, and I can't lie on the roof. About all I can do is put the record player on auto repeat and listen to Kind of Blue over and over while I watch the rain falling in the quadrangle. As I wrote to you earlier, I don't wind my spring on Sundays. That's why this letter is so damn long. I'm stopping now. I'm going to the dining hall for lunch. Goodbye. 261

There was no sign of Midori at the next day's lecture, either. What had happened to her? Ten days had gone by since we last talked on the phone. I thought about calling her, but decided against it. She had said that she would call me. That Thursday I saw Nagasawa in the dining hall. He sat down next to me with a tray full of food and apologized for having made our \"party\" so unpleasant. \"Never mind,\" I said. \"I should be thanking you for a great dinner. I have to admit, though, it was a funny way to celebrate your first job.\" \"You can say that again.\" A few minutes went by as we ate in silence. \"I made up with Hatsumi,\" he said. \"I'm not surprised.\" \"I was kind of tough on you, too, as I recall it.\" \"What's with all the apologizing?\" I asked. \"Are you ill?\" \"I may be,\" he said with a few little nods. \"Hatsumi tells me you told her to leave me.\" \"It only makes sense,\" I said. \"Yeah, I s'pose so,\" said Nagasawa. \"She's a great girl,\" I said, slurping my miso soup. \"I know,\" he said with a sigh. \"A little too great for me.\" I was sleeping the sleep of death when the buzzer rang to let me know I had a call. It brought me back from the absolute core of sleep in total 262

confusion. I felt as if I had been sleeping with my head soaked in water until my brain swelled up. The clock said 6.15 but I had no idea if that meant a.m. or p.m., and I couldn't remember what day it was. I looked out of the window and realized there was no flag on the pole. It was probably p.m. So, raising that flag served some purpose after all. \"Hey, Watanabe, are you free now?\" Midori asked. \"I don't know, what day is it?\" \"Friday.\" \"Morning or evening?\" \"Evening, of course! You're so weird! Let's see, it's, uh, 6.18 p.m.\" So it was p.m. after all! That's right, I had been stretched out on my bed reading a book when I dozed off. Friday. My head started working. I didn't have to go to the record shop on Friday nights. \"Yeah, I'm free. Where are you?\" \"Ueno Station. Why don't you meet me in Shinjuku? I'll leave now.\" We set a time and place and hung up. When I got to DUG, Midori was sitting at the far end of the counter with a drink. She wore a man's wrinkled, white balmacaan coat, a thin yellow jumper, blue jeans, and two bracelets on one wrist. \"What're you drinking?\" I asked. \"Tom Collins.\" I ordered a whisky and soda, then realized there was a big suitcase by Midori's feet. I went away,\" she said. \"Just got back.\" \"Where'd you go?\" \"South to Nara and north to Aomori.\" \"On the same trip?!\" \"Don't be stupid. I may be strange, but I can't go north and south at the same time. I went to Nara with my boyfriend, and then took off to Aomori alone.\" 263

I sipped my whisky and soda, then struck a match to light the Marlboro that Midori held between her lips. \"You must have had a terrible time, what with the funeral and everything.\" \"Nah, a funeral's a piece of cake. We've had plenty of practice. You put on a black kimono and sit there like a lady and everybody else takes care of business - an uncle, a neighbour, like that. They bring the sake, order the sushi, say comforting things, cry, carry on, divide up the keepsakes. It's a breeze. A picnic. Compared to nursing someone day after day, it's an absolute picnic. We were drained, my sister and me. We couldn't even cry. We didn't have any tears left. Really. Except, when you do that, they start whispering about you: \"Those girls are as cold as ice.' So then, we're never going to cry, that's just how the two of us are. I know we could have faked it, but we would never do anything like that. The bastards! The more they wanted to see us cry, the more determined we were not to give them the satisfaction. My sister and I are totally different types, but when it comes to something like that, we're in absolute sync.\" Midori's bracelets jangled on her arm as she waved to the waiter and ordered another Tom Collins and a small bowl of pistachios. \"So then, after the funeral ended and everybody went home, the two of us drank sake till the sun went down. Polished off one of those huge half-gallon bottles, and half of another one, and the whole time we were dumping on everybody - this one's an idiot, that one's a shithead, one guy looks like a mangy dog, another one's a pig, so-and-so's a hypocrite, that one's a crook. You have no idea how great it felt!\" \"I can imagine.\" \"We got pissed and went to bed - both of us out cold. We slept for hours, and if the phone rang or something, we just let it go. Dead to the world. Finally, after we woke up, we ordered sushi and talked about what to do. We decided to close the shop for a while and enjoy ourselves. We'd been killing ourselves for months and we deserved a 264

break. My sister just wanted to hang around with her boyfriend for a while, and I decided I'd take mine on a trip for a couple of days and fuck like crazy.\" Midori clamped her mouth shut and rubbed her ears. \"Oops, sorry.\" \"That's OK,\" I said. \"So you went to Nara.\" \"Yeah, I've always liked that place. The temples, the deer park.\" \"And did you fuck like crazy?\" \"No, not at all, not even once,\" she said with a sigh. \"The second we walked into the hotel room and dumped our bags, my period started. A real gusher.\" I couldn't help laughing. \"Hey, it's not funny. I was a week early! I couldn't stop crying when that happened. I think all the stress threw me off. My boyfriend got sooo angry! He's like that: he gets angry straight away. It wasn't my fault, though. It's not like I wanted to get my period. And, well, mine are kind of on the heavy side anyway. The first day or two, I don't want to do anything. Make sure you keep away from me then.\" \"I'd like to, but how can I tell?\" I asked. \"OK, I'll wear a hat for a couple of days after my period starts. A red one. That should work,\" she said with a laugh \"If you see me on the street and I'm wearing a red hat, don't talk to me, just run away.\" \"Great. I wish all girls would do that,\" I said. \"So anyway what did you do in Nara?\" \"What else could we do? We fed the deer and walked all over the place. It was just awful! We had a big fight and I haven't seen him since we got back. I hung around for a couple of days and decided to take a nice trip all by myself. So I went to Aomori. I stayed with a friend in Hirosaki for the first two nights, and then I started travelling around - Shimokita, Tappi, places like that. They're nice. I once wrote a map brochure for the area. Ever been there?\" \"Never.\" \"So anyway,\" said Midori, sipping her Tom Collins, then wrenching 265

open a pistachio, \"the whole time I was travelling by myself, I was thinking of you. I was thinking how nice it would be if I could have you with me.\" \"How come?\" \"How come?!\" Midori looked at me with eyes focused on nothingness. \"What do you mean \"How come?'?!\" \"Just that. How come you were thinking of me?\" \"Maybe because I like you, that's how come! Why else would I be thinking of you? Who would ever think they wanted to be with somebody they didn't like?\" \"But you've got a boyfriend,\" I said. \"You don't have to think about me.\" I took a slow sip of my whisky and soda. \"Meaning I'm not allowed to think about you if I've got a boyfriend?\" \"No, that's not it, I just - \" \"Now get this straight, Watanabe,\" said Midori, pointing at me. \"I'm warning you, I've got a whole month's worth of misery crammed inside me and getting ready to blow. So watch what you say to me. Any more of that kind of stuff and I'll flood this place with tears. Once I get started, I'm good for the whole night. Are you ready for that? I'm an absolute animal when I start crying, it doesn't matter where I am! I'm not joking.\" I nodded and kept quiet. I ordered a second whisky and soda and ate a few pistachios. Somewhere behind the sound of a sloshing shaker and clinking glasses and the scrape of an ice maker, Sarah Vaughan sang an old-fashioned love song. \"Things haven't been right between me and my boyfriend ever since the tampon incident.\" \"Tampon incident?\" \"Yeah, I was out drinking with him and a few of his friends about a month ago and I told them the story of a woman in my neighbourhood who blew out a tampon when she sneezed. Funny, right?\" \"That is funny,\" I said with a laugh. 266

\"Yeah, all the other guys thought so, too. But he got mad and said I shouldn't be talking about such dirty things. Such a wet blanket!\" \"Wow.\" \"He's a wonderful guy, but he can be really narrow-minded when it comes to stuff like that,\" said Midori. \"Like, he gets mad if I wear anything but white underwear. Don't you think that's narrow-minded?\" \"Maybe so,\" I said, \"but it's just a matter of taste.\" It seemed incredible to me that a guy like that would want a girlfriend like Midori, but I kept this thought to myself. \"So, what have you been doing?\" she asked. \"Nothing. Same as ever,\" I said, but then I recalled my attempt to masturbate while thinking of Midori as I had promised to do. I told her about it in a low voice that wouldn't carry to the others around us. Midori's eyes lit up and she snapped her fingers. \"How'd it go? Was it good?\" \"Nah, I got embarrassed halfway through and stopped.\" \"You mean you lost your erection?\" \"Pretty much.\" \"Damn,\" she said, shooting a look of annoyance at me. \"You can't let yourself get embarrassed. Think about something really sexy. It's OK, I'm giving you permission. Hey, I know what! Next time I'll get on the phone with you: \"Oh, oh, that's great ... Oh, I feel it ... Stop, I'm gonna come ... Oh, don't do that!' I'll say stuff like that to you while you're doing it.\" \"The dormitory phone is in the lobby by the front door, with people coming in and out all the time,\" I explained. \"The dorm Head would kill me with his bare hands if he saw me wanking in a place like that.\" \"Oh, too bad.\" \"Never mind,\" I said. \"I'll try again by myself one of these days.\" \"Give it your best shot,\" said Midori. \"I will,\" I said. \"I wonder if it's me,\" she said. \"Maybe I'm just not Innately.\" \"That's not it,\" I assured her. \"It's more a question of attitude.\" 267

\"You know,\" she said, \"I have this tremendously sensitive back. The soft touch of fingers all over ... mmmmm.\" \"I'll keep that in mind.\" \"Hey, why don't we go now and see a dirty film?\" Midori suggested. \"A really filthy S&M one.\" We went from the bar to an eel shop, and from there to one of Shinjuku's most run-down adult cinemas to see a triple bill. It was the only place we could find in the paper that was showing S&M stuff. Inside, the cinema had some kind of indefinable smell. Our timing was good: the S&M film was just starting as we took our seats. It was the story of a secretary and her schoolgirl sister being kidnapped by a bunch of men and subjected to sadistic tortures. The men made the older one to do all kinds of awful things by threatening to rape the sister, but soon the older sister is transformed into a raging masochist, and the younger one gets really turned on from having to watch all the contortions they put her through. It was such a gloomy, repetitive film, I got bored after a while. \"If I were the younger sister, I wouldn't get worked up so easily,\" said Midori. \"I'd keep watching.\" \"I'm sure you would,\" I said. \"And anyway, don't you think her nipples are too dark for a schoolgirl - a virgin?\" \"Absolutely.\" Midori's eyes were glued to the screen. I was impressed: anyone watching a film with such fierce intensity was getting more than her money's worth. She kept reporting her thoughts to me: \"Oh my God, will you look at that!\" or \"Three guys at once! They're going to tear her apart!\" or \"I'd like to try that on somebody, Watanabe.\" I was enjoying Midori a lot more than the film. When the lights went up during the intermission, I realized there were no other women in the place. One young man sitting near us - probably a student - took one look at Midori and changed his seat to 268

the far side. \"Tell me, Watanabe, do you get hard watching this kind of stuff?\" \"Well, yeah, sometimes,\" I said. \"That's why they make these films.\" \"So what you're saying is, every time one of those scenes starts, every man in the cinema has his thing standing to attention? Thirty or forty of them sticking up all at once? It's so weird if you stop and think about it, don't you think?\" \"Yeah, I guess so, now you mention it.\" The second feature was a fairly normal porn flick, which meant it was even more boring than the first. It had lots of oral sex scenes, and every time they started doing fellatio or cunnilingus or sixty-nine the soundtrack would fill the cinema with loud sucking or slurping sound effects. Listening to them, I felt strangely moved to think that I was living out my life on this bizarre planet of ours. \"Who comes up with these sounds, I wonder,\" I said to Midori. \"I think they're great!\" she said. There was also a sound for a penis moving in and out of a vagina. I had never realized that such sounds even existed. The man was into a lot of heavy breathing, and the woman came up with the usual sort of expressions - \"Yes!\" or \"More!\" - as she writhed under him. You could also hear the bed creaking. These scenes just went on and on. Midori seemed to be enjoying them at first, but even she got bored after a while and suggested we leave. We went outside and took a few deep breaths. This was the first time in my life the outside air of Shinjuku felt healthy to me. \"That was fun,\" said Midori. \"Let's try it again sometime.\" \"They just keep doing the same things,\" I said. \"Well, what else can they do? We all just keep doing the same things.\" She had a point there. We found another bar and ordered drinks. I had more whisky, and Midori drank three or four cocktails of some indefinable kind. Outside again, Midori said she wanted to climb a tree. 269

\"There aren't any trees around here,\" I said. \"And even if there were, you're too wobbly to do any climbing.\" \"You're always so damn sensible, you ruin everything. I'm drunk 'cause I wanna be drunk. What's wrong with that? And even if I am drunk, I can still climb a tree. Shit, I'm gonna climb all the way to the top of a great, big, tall tree and I'm gonna pee all over everybody!\" \"You wouldn't happen to need the toilet by any chance?\" \"Yup. I took Midori to a pay toilet in Shinjuku Station, put a coin in the slot and bundled her inside, then bought an evening paper at a nearby stand and read it while I waited for her to come out. But she didn't come out. I started getting worried after 15 minutes and was ready to go and check on her when she finally emerged looking pale. \"Sorry,\" she said. \"I fell asleep.\" \"Are you OK?\" I asked, putting my coat around her shoulders. \"Not really,\" she said. \"I'll take you home. You just have to get home, take a nice, long bath and go to bed. You're exhausted.\" \"I am not going home. What's the point? Nobody's there. I don't want to sleep all by myself in a place like that.\" \"Terrific,\" I said. \"So what are you going to do?\" \"Go to some love hotel around here and sleep with your arms around me all night. Like a log. Tomorrow morning we'll have breakfast somewhere and go to lectures together.\" \"You were planning this all along, weren't you? That's why you called me.\" \"Of course. \"You should have called your boyfriend, not me. That's the only thing that makes sense. That's what boyfriends are for.\" \"But I want to be with you.\" \"You can't be with me,\" I said. \"First of all, I have to be back in the dorm by midnight. Otherwise, I'll break curfew. The one time I did 270

that there was all hell to pay. And secondly, if I go to bed with a girl, I'm going to want to do it with her, and the last thing I want is to lie there struggling to restrain myself. I'm not kidding, I might end up forcing you.\" \"You mean you'd hit me and tie me up and rape me from behind?\" \"Hey, look, I'm serious.\" \"But I'm so lonely! I want to be with someone! I know I'm doing terrible things to you, making demands and not giving you anything in return, saying whatever pops into my head, dragging you out of your room and forcing you to take me everywhere, but you're the only one I can do stuff like that to! I've never been able to have my own way with anybody, not once in the 20 years I've been alive. My father, my mother, they never paid the slightest attention to me, and my boyfriend, well, he's just not that kind of guy. He gets angry if I try to have my own way. So we end up fighting. You're the only one I can say these things to. And now I'm really, really, really tired and I want to fall asleep listening to someone tell me how much they like me and how pretty I am and stuff. That's all I want. And when I wake up, I'll be full of energy and I'll never make these kinds of selfish demands again. I swear. I'll be a good girl.\" \"I hear you, believe me, but there's nothing I can do.\" \"Oh, please! Otherwise, I'm going to sit down right here on the ground and cry my head off all night long. And I'll sleep with the first guy that talks to me.\" That did it. I called the dorm and asked for Nagasawa. When he got to the phone I asked him if he would make it look as if I had come back for the evening. I was with a girl, I explained. \"Fine,\" he said. \"It's a worthy cause, I'll be glad to help you out. I'll just turn over your name tag to the \"in' side. Don't worry. Take all the time you need. You can come in through my window in the morning.\" \"Thanks. I owe you one,\" I said and hung up. \"All set?\" Midori asked. \"Pretty much,\" I said with a sigh. \"Great, let's go to a disco, it's so 271

early.\" \"Wait a minute, I thought you were tired.\" \"For something like this, I'm just fine.\" \"Oh boy.\" And she was right. We went to a disco, and her energy came back little by little as we danced. She drank two whisky and cokes, and stayed on the dance floor until her forehead was drenched in sweat. \"This is so much fun!\" she exclaimed when we took a break at a table. \"I haven't danced like this in ages. I don't know, when you move your body, it's kind of like your spirit gets liberated.\" \"Your spirit is always liberated, I'd say.\" \"No way,\" she said, shaking her head and smiling. \"Anyway, now that I'm feeling better, I'm starved! Let's go for a pizza.\" I took her to a pizzeria I knew and ordered draught beer and an anchovy pizza. I wasn't very hungry and ate only four of the twelve slices. Midori finished the rest. \"You sure made a fast recovery,\" I said. \"Not too long ago you were pale and wobbly.\" \"It's because my selfish demands got through to somebody,,, she answered. \"It unclogged me. Wow, this pizza is great!', \"Tell me, though. Is there really nobody at home?\" \"It's true. My sister's staying at her friend's place. Now, that girl's got a real case of the creeps. She can't sleep alone in the house if I'm not there.\" \"Let's forget this love hotel crap, then. Going to a place like that just makes you feel cheap. Let's go to your house. You must have enough bedding for me?\" Midori thought about it for a minute, then nodded. \"OK, we'll spend the night at mine.\" We took the Yamanote Line to Otsuka, and soon we were raising the metal shutter that sealed off the front of the Kobayashi Bookshop. A paper sign on the shutter read TEMPORARILY CLOSED. The smell of old paper filled the dark shop, as if the shutter had not been opened for a long time. Half the shelves were empty, and most of the 272

magazines had been tied in bundles for returns. That hollow, chilly feeling I had experienced on my first visit had only deepened. The place looked like a hulk abandoned on the shore. \"You're not planning to open shop again?\" I asked. \"Nah, we're going to sell it,\" said Midori. \"We'll divide the money and live on our own for a while without anybody's \"protection'. My sister's getting married next year, and I've got three more years at university. We ought to make enough to see us through that much at least. I'll keep my part-time job, too. Once the place is sold, I'll live with my sister in a flat for a while.\" \"You think somebody'll want to buy it? \"Probably. I know somebody who wants to open a wool shop, She's been asking me recently if I want to sell. Poor Dad, though. He worked so hard to get this place, and he was paying off the loan he took out little by little, and in the end he hardly had anything left. It all melted away, like foam on a river.\" \"He had you, though,\" I said. \"Me?!\" Midori said with a laugh. She took a deep breath and let it out. \"Let's go upstairs. It's cold down here.\" Upstairs, she sat me at the kitchen table and went to warm the bath water. While she busied herself with that, I put a kettle on to boil and made tea. Waiting for the tank to heat up, we sat across from each other at the kitchen table and drank tea. Chin in hand, she took a long, hard look at me. There were no sounds other than the ticking of the clock and the hum of the fridge motor turning on and off as the thermostat kicked in and out. The clock showed that midnight was fast approaching. \"You know, Watanabe, study it hard enough, and you've got a pretty interesting face.\" \"Think so?\" I asked, a bit hurt. \"A nice face goes a long way with me,\" she said. \"And yours ... well, the more I look at it, the more I get to thinking, \"He'll do'.\" 273

\"Me, too,\" I said. \"Every once in a while, I think about myself, \"What the hell, I'll do'.\" \"Hey, I don't mean that in a bad way. I'm not very good at putting my feelings into words. That's why people misunderstand me. All I'm trying to say is I like you. Have I told you that before?\" \"You have,\" I said. \"I mean, I'm not the only one who has trouble working out what men are all about. But I'm getting there, a little at a time.\" Midori brought over a box of Marlboro and lit one up. \"When you start at zero, you've got a lot to learn.\" \"I wouldn't be surprised.\" \"Oh, I almost forgot! You want to burn a stick of incense for my father?\" I followed Midori to the room with the Buddhist altar, lit a stick of incense in front of her father's photo, and brought my hands together. \"Know what I did the other day?\" Midori asked. \"I got all naked in front of my father's picture. Took off every stitch of clothing and let him have a good, long look. Kind of in a yoga position. Like, \"Here, Daddy, these are my tits, and this is my cunt'.\" \"Why in the hell would you do something like that?\" I asked. \"I don't know, I just wanted to show him. I mean, half of me comes from his sperm, right? Why shouldn't I show him? \"Here's the daughter you made.' I was a little drunk at the time. I suppose that had something to do with it.\" \"I suppose.\" \"My sister walked in and almost fell over. There I was in front of my father's memorial portrait all naked with my legs spread. I guess you would be kind of surprised.\" \"I s'pose so.\" \"I explained why I was doing it and said, \"So take off your clothes too Momo (her name's Momo), and sit down next to me and show him,' but she wouldn't do it. She went away shocked. She has this really conservative streak.\" \"In other words, she's relatively normal, you mean.\" 274

\"Tell me, Watanabe, what did you think of my father?\" \"I'm not good with people I've just met, but it didn't bother me being alone with him. I felt pretty comfortable. We talked about all kinds of stuff.\" -What kind of stuff?\" -Euripides,\" I said. Midori laughed out loud. \"You're so weird! Nobody talks about Euripides with a dying person they've just met!\" ,,Well, nobody sits in front of her father's memorial portrait with her legs spread, either!\" Midori chuckled and gave the altar bell a ring. \"Night-night, Daddy. We're going to have some fun now, so don't worry and get some sleep. You're not suffering any more, right? You're dead, OK? I'm sure you're not suffering. If you are, you'd better complain to the gods. Tell 'em it's just too cruel. I hope you meet Mum and the two of you really do it. I saw your willy when I helped you pee. It was pretty impressive! So give it everything you've got. Goodnight.\" We took turns in the bath and changed into pyjamas. I borrowed a nearly new pair of her father's. They were a little small but better than nothing. Midori spread out a mattress for me on the floor of the altar room. \"You're not scared sleeping in front of the altar?\" she asked. \"Not at all. I haven't done anything bad,\" I said with a smile. \"But you're going to stay with me and hold me until I fall asleep, right?\" \"Right,\" I said. Practically falling over the edge of Midori's little bed, I held her in my arms. Nose against my chest, she placed her hands on my hips. My right arm curled around her back while I tried to keep from falling out by hanging on to the bed frame with my left hand. It was not exactly a 275

situation conducive to sexual excitement. My nose was resting on her head and her short-cut hair would tickle every now and then. \"Come on, say something to me,\" Midori said, her face buried in my chest. \"What do you want me to say?\" \"Anything. Something to make me feel good.\" \"You're really cute,\" I said. \" - Midori,\" she said. \"Say my name.\" \"You're really cute, Midori,\" I corrected myself. \"What do you mean really cute?\" \"So cute the mountains crumble and the oceans dry up.\" Midori lifted her face and looked at me. \"You have this special way with words.\" \"I can feel my heart softening when you say that,\" I said, smiling. \"Say something even nicer.\" \"I really like you, Midori. A lot.\" \"How much is a lot?\" \"Like a spring bear,\" I said. \"A spring bear?\" Midori looked up again. \"What's that all about? A spring bear.\" \"You're walking through a field all by yourself one day in spring, and this sweet little bear cub with velvet fur and shiny little eyes comes walking along. And he says to you, \"Hi, there, little lady. Want to tumble with me?' So you and the bear cub spend the whole day in each other's arms, tumbling down this clover-covered hill. Nice, huh?\" \"Yeah. Really nice.\" \"That's how much I like you.\" \"That is the best thing I've ever heard,\" said Midori, cuddling up against my chest. \"If you like me that much, you'll do anything I tell you to do, right? You won't get angry, right?\" \"No, of course not.\" \"And you'll take care of me always and always.\" ,,Of course I will,\" I said, stroking her short, soft, boyish hair. \"Don't 276

worry, everything is going to be fine.\" \"But I'm scared,\" she said. I held her softly, and soon her shoulders were rising and falling, and I could hear the regular breathing of sleep. I slipped out of her bed and went to the kitchen, where I drank a beer. I wasn't the least bit sleepy, so I thought about reading a book, but I couldn't find anything worth reading nearby. I considered returning to Midori's room to look for one, but I didn't want to wake her by rummaging around while she was sleeping. I sat there staring into space for a while, sipping my beer, when it occurred to me that I was in a bookshop. I went downstairs, switched on the light and started looking through the paperback shelves. There wasn't much that appealed to me, and most of what did I had read already, but I had to have something to read no matter what. I picked a discoloured copy of Hermann Hesse's Beneath the Wheel that must have been hanging around the shop unsold for a long time, and left the money for it by the till. This was my small contribution to reducing the debts of the Kobayashi Bookshop. I sat at the kitchen table, drinking my beer and reading Beneath the Wheel. I had first read the novel the year I entered school. And now, about eight years later, here I was, reading the same book in a girl's kitchen, wearing the undersized pyjamas of her dead father. Funny. If it hadn't been for these strange circumstances, I would probably never have reread Beneath the Wheel. The book did have its dated moments, but as a novel it wasn't bad. I moved through it slowly, enjoying it line by line, in the hushed bookshop in the middle of the night. A dusty bottle of brandy stood on a shelf in the kitchen. I poured a little into a coffee cup and sipped it. It warmed me but did nothing to help me feel sleepy. I went to check on Midori a little before three, but she was fast asleep. She must have been exhausted. The lights from the block of shops 277

beyond the window cast a soft white glow, like moonlight, over the room. Midori slept with her back to the light. She lay so perfectly still, she might have been frozen stiff. Bending over, I caught the sound of her breathing. She slept just like her father. The suitcase from her recent travels stood by the bed. Her white coat hung on the back of a chair. Her desktop was neatly arranged, and on the wall over it hung a Snoopy calendar. I nudged the curtain aside and looked down at the deserted shops. Every shop was closed, their metal shutters down, the vending machines hunched in front of the off-licence the only sign of something waiting for the dawn. The moan of longdistance lorry tyres sent a deep shudder through the air every now and then. I went back to the kitchen, poured myself another shot of brandy, and went on reading Beneath the Wheel. By the time I had finished it the sky was growing light. I made myself some instant coffee and used some notepaper and a ballpoint pen I found on the table to write a message to Midori: I drank some of your brandy. I bought a copy of Beneath the Wheel. It's light outside, so I'm going home. Goodbye. Then, after some hesitation, I wrote: You look really cute when you're sleeping. I washed my coffee cup, switched off the kitchen light, went downstairs, quietly lifted the shutter, and stepped outside. I worried that a neighbour might find me suspicious, but there was no one on the street at 5.50-something in the morning. Only the crows were on their usual rooftop perch, glaring down at the street. I glanced up at the pale pink curtains in Midori's window, walked to the tram stop, rode to the end of the line, and walked to my dorm. On the way I found an open cafe and ate a breakfast of rice and miso soup, pickled vegetables and fried eggs. Circling around to the back of the dorm, I tapped on Nagasawa's ground-floor window. He let me in immediately. \"Coffee?\" he asked. \"Nah.\" I thanked him, went up to my room, brushed my teeth, took my 278

trousers off, got under the covers, and clamped my eyes shut. Finally, a dreamless sleep closed over me like a heavy lead door. I wrote to Naoko every week, and she often wrote back. Her letters were never very long. Soon there were references to the cold November mornings and evenings. You went back to Tokyo just about the time the autumn weather was deepening, so for a time I couldn't tell whether the hole that opened up inside me was from missing you or from the change of the season. Reiko and I talk about you all the time. She says be sure to say \"Hi\" to you. She is as nice to me as ever. I don't think I would have been able to stand this place if I didn't have her with me. I cry when I'm lonely. Reiko says it's good I can cry. But feeling lonely really hurts. When I'm lonely at night, people talk to me from the darkness. They talk to me the way trees moan in the wind at night. Kizuki; my sister: they talk to me like that all the time. They're lonely, too, and looking for someone to talk to. I often reread your letters at night when I'm lonely and in pain. I get confused by a lot of things that come from outside, but your descriptions of the world around you give me wonderful relief. It's so strange! I wonder why that should be? So I read them over and over, and Reiko reads them, too. Then we talk about the things you tell me. I really liked the part about that girl Midori's father. We look forward to getting your letter every week as one of our few entertainments - yes, in a place like this, letters are our entertainments. I try my best to set aside a time in the week for writing to you, but once I actually sit down in front of the blank sheet of paper, I begin to feel depressed. I'm really having to push myself to write this letter, too. Reiko's been yelling at me to answer you. Don't get me wrong, though. I have tons of things I want to talk to you about, to tell you about. It's just hard for me to put them into words. Which is why it's 279

so painful for me to write letters. Speaking of Midori, she sounds like an interesting person. Reading your letter, I got the feeling she might be in love with you. When I told that to Reiko, she said, \"Well, of course she is! Even I am in love with Watanabe!' We're picking mushrooms and gathering chestnuts and eating them every day. And I do mean every day: rice with chestnuts, rice with matsutake mushrooms, but they taste so great, we never get tired of them. Reiko doesn't eat that much, though. For her, it's still one cigarette after another. The birds and the rabbits are doing fine. Goodbye. Three days after my twentieth birthday, a package arrived for me from Naoko. Inside I found a wine-coloured crew neck pullover and a letter. Happy Birthday! I hope you have a happy year being 20. My own year of being 20 looks like it's going to end with me as miserable as ever, but I'd really like it if you could have your share of happiness and mine combined. Really. Reiko and I each knitted half of this jumper. If I had done it all by myself, it would have taken until next Valentine's Day. The good half is Reiko's, and the bad half is mine. Reiko is so good at everything she does, I sometimes hate myself when I'm watching her. I mean, there's not a single thing I'm really good at! Goodbye. Be well. The package had a short note from Reiko, too. How are you? For you, Naoko may be the pinnacle of happiness, but for me she's just a clumsy girl. Still, we managed to finish this jumper in time for your birthday. Handsome, isn't it? We chose the colour and 280

the style. Happy Birthday. 281

Thinking back on the year 1969, all that comes to mind for me is a swamp - a deep, sticky bog that feels as if it's going to suck off my shoe each time I take a step. I walk through the mud, exhausted. In front of me, behind me, I can see nothing but the endless darkness of a swamp. Time itself slogged along in rhythm with my faltering steps. The people around me had gone on ahead long before, while my time and I hung back, struggling through the mud. The world around me was on the verge of great transformations. Death had already taken John Coltrane who was joined now by so many others. People screamed there'd be revolutionary changes - which always seemed to be just ahead, at the curve in the road. But the \"changes\" that came were just two-dimensional stage sets, backdrops without substance or meaning. I trudged along through each day in its turn, rarely looking up, eyes locked on the never-ending swamp that lay before me, planting my right foot, raising my left, planting my left foot, raising my right, never sure where I was, never sure I was headed in the right direction, knowing only that I had to keep moving, one step at a time. I turned 20, autumn gave way to winter, but in my life nothing changed in any significant way. Unexcited, I went to my lectures, worked three nights a week in the record shop reread The Great Gatsby now and then, and when Sunday came I would do my washing and write a long letter to Naoko. Sometimes I would go out with Midori for a meal or to the zoo or to the cinema. The sale of the Kobayashi Bookshop went as planned, and Midori and her sister moved into a two-bedroom flat near Myogadani, a more upmarket neighbourhood. Midori would move out when her sister got married, and rent a flat by herself, she said. Meanwhile, she invited me to their 282

new place for lunch once. It was a sunny, handsome flat, and Midori seemed to enjoy living there far more than she had above the Kobayashi Bookshop. Every once in a while, Nagasawa would suggest that we go out on one of our excursions, but I always found something else to do instead. I just didn't want the hassle. Not that I didn't like the idea of sleeping with girls: it was just that, when I thought about the whole process I had to go through - drinking in town, looking for the right kind of girls, talking to them, going to a hotel - it was all too much effort. I had to admire Nagasawa all the more for the way he could continue the ritual without ever getting sick and tired of it. Maybe what Hatsumi had said to me had had some effect: I could make myself feel far happier just thinking about Naoko than sleeping with some stupid, anonymous girl. The sensation of Naoko's fingers bringing me to climax in a grassy field remained vivid inside me. I wrote to her at the beginning of December to ask if it would be all right for me to come and visit her during the winter holidays. An answer came from Reiko saying they would love to have me. She explained that Naoko was having trouble writing and that she was answering for her. I was not to take this to mean that Naoko was feeling especially bad: there was no need for me to worry. These things came in waves. When the holidays came, I stuffed my things into my rucksack, put on snow boots and set out for Kyoto. The odd doctor had been right: the winter mountains blanketed in snow were incredibly beautiful. As before, I slept two nights in the flat with Naoko and Reiko, and spent three days with them doing much the same kind of things as before. When the sun went down, Reiko would play her guitar and the three of us would sit around talking. Instead of our picnic, we went cross- country skiing. An hour of tramping through the woods on skis left us breathless and sweaty. We also joined the residents and staff 283

shovelling snow when there was time. Doctor Miyata popped over to our table at dinner to explain why people's middle fingers are longer than their index fingers, while with toes it worked the other way. The gatekeeper, Omura, talked to me again about Tokyo pork. Reiko enjoyed the records I brought as gifts from the city. She transcribed a few tunes and worked them out on her guitar. Naoko was even less talkative than she had been in the autumn. When the three of us were together, she would sit on the sofa, smiling, and hardly say a word. Reiko seemed to be chattering away to make up for her. \"But don't worry,\" Naoko told me. \"This is just one of those times. It's a lot more fun for me to listen to you two than to talk myself.\" Reiko gave herself some chores that took her out of the flat so that Naoko and I could get in bed. I kissed her neck and shoulders and breasts, and she used her hands to bring me to climax as before. Afterwards, holding her close, I told her how her touch had stayed with me these two months, that I had thought of her and masturbated. \"You haven't slept with anybody else?\" Naoko asked. \"Not once,\" I said. \"All right, then, here's something else for you to remember.\" She slid down and kissed my penis, then enveloped it in her warm mouth and ran her tongue all over it, her long, straight hair swaying over my belly and groin with each movement of her lips until I came a second time. \"Do you think you can remember that?\" she asked. \"Of course I can,\" I said. \"I'll always remember it.\" I held her tight and slid my hand inside her panties, touching her still- dry vagina. Naoko shook her head and pulled my hand away. We held each other for a time, saying nothing. \"I'm thinking of getting out of the dorm when term ends and looking for a flat,\" I said. \"I've had it with dorm life. If I keep working part- time I can pretty much cover my expenses. How about coming to 284

Tokyo to live with me, the way I suggested before?\" \"Oh, Toru, thank you. I'm so happy that you would ask me to do something like that!\" \"It's not that I think there's anything wrong with this place,\" I said. \"It's quiet, the surroundings are perfect, and Reiko is a wonderful person. But it's not a place to stay for a long time. It's too specialized for a long stay. The longer you're here, I'm sure, the harder it is to leave.\" Instead of answering, Naoko turned her gaze to the outside. Beyond the window, there was nothing to see but snow. Snow clouds hung low and heavy in the sky, with only the smallest gap between them and the snow-covered earth. \"Take your time, think it over,\" I said. \"Whatever happens, I'm going to move by the end of March. Any time you decide you want to join me, you can come.\" Naoko nodded. I wrapped my arms around her as carefully as if I had been holding a work of art delicately fashioned from glass. She put her arms around my neck. I was naked, and she wore only the skimpiest white underwear. Her body was so beautiful, I could have enjoyed looking at it all day. \"Why don't I get wet?\" Naoko murmured. \"That one time was the only time it ever happened. The day of my twentieth birthday, that April. The night you held me in your arms. What is wrong with me?\" \"It's strictly psychological, I'm sure,\" I said. \"Give it time. There's no hurry.\" \"All of my problems are strictly psychological,\" said Naoko. \"What if I never get better? What if I can never have sex for the rest of my life? Can you keep loving me just the same? Will hands and lips always be enough for you? Or will you solve the sex problem by sleeping with other girls?\" \"I'm a born optimist,\" I said. Naoko sat up in bed and slipped on a T-shirt. She put a flannel shirt 285

over this, and then climbed into her jeans. I put my clothes on, too. \"Let me think about it,\" said Naoko. \"And you think about it, too.\" \"I will,\" I said. \"And speaking of lips, what you did with them just now was great.\" She reddened slightly and gave a little smile. \"Kizuki used to say that, too.\" \"He and I had pretty much the same tastes and opinions,\" I said, smiling. We sat across from each other at the kitchen table, drinking coffee and talking about the old days. She was beginning to talk more about Kizuki. She would hesitate, and choose her words carefully. Every now and then, the snow would fall for a while and stop. The sky never cleared the whole three days I was there. \"I think I can get back here in March,\" I said as I was leaving. I gave her one last, heavily padded hug with my winter coat on, and kissed her on the lips. \"Goodbye,\" she said. 1970 - a year with a whole new sound to it - came along, and that put an end to my teenage years. Now I could step out into a whole new swamp. Then it was time for exams, and these I passed with relative ease. If you have nothing else to do and spend all your time going to lectures, it takes no special skill to get through end-of-year exams. Some problems arose in the dorm, though. A few guys active in one of the political factions kept their helmets and iron pipes hidden in their rooms. They had a run-in with some of the baseball-players under the wing of the dorm Head, as a result of which two of them were injured and six expelled. The aftershock of the incident was felt for a long time, spawning minor fights on an almost daily basis. The atmosphere that hung over the dorm was oppressive, and people's nerves were on edge. I myself was on the verge of getting knocked out by one of the baseball-players when Nagasawa intervened and managed to smooth things over. In any case, it was time for me to get out of there. 286

Once most of my exams were out of the way, I started looking for a flat in earnest. After a week of searching, I came up with the right place way out in the suburbs of Kichijoji. The location was not exactly convenient, but it was a house: an independent house - a real find. Originally a gardener's shack or some other kind of cottage, it stood by itself in the corner of a good-sized plot of land, separated from the main house by a large stretch of neglected garden. The landlord would use the front gate, and I the back, which would make it possible for me to preserve my privacy. It had one good-sized room, a little kitchen and bathroom, and an unimaginably huge closet. It even had a veranda facing the garden. A nice old couple were renting the house at way below market value on condition that the tenant was prepared to move out the following year if their grandson decided to come to Tokyo. They assured me that I could live as I pleased there; they wouldn't make any demands. Nagasawa helped me with the move. He managed to borrow a van to transfer my stuff, and, as promised, he gave me his fridge, TV, and oversize thermos flask. He might not need them any more, but for me they were perfect. He himself was scheduled to move out in two days, to a flat in the Mita neighbourhood. \"I guess we won't be seeing each other for a long time,\" he said as he left me, \"so keep well. I'm still sure we'll run across each other in some strange place years from now.\" \"I'm already looking forward to it,\" I said. \"And that time we switched girls, the funny-looking one was way better.\" \"Right on,\" I said with a laugh. \"But anyway, Nagasawa, take care of Hatsumi. Good ones like her are hard to find. And she's a lot more fragile than she looks.\" \"Yeah, I know,\" he said, nodding. \"That's why I was hoping you would take her when I was through. The two of you would make a 287

great couple.\" \"Yeah, right!\" I said. \"Just kidding,\" said Nagasawa. \"Anyway, be happy. I get the feeling a lot of shit is going to come your way, but you're a stubborn bastard, I'm sure you'll handle it. Mind if I give you one piece of advice?\" \"Go ahead.\" \"Don't feel sorry for yourself,\" he said. \"Only arseholes do that.\" \"I'll keep it in mind,\" I said. We shook hands and went our separate ways, he to his new world, and I back to my swamp. Three days after my move, I wrote to Naoko. I described my new house and said how relieved I was to be away from the idiots in the dorm and all their stupid brainstorms. Now I could start my new life with a new frame of mind. My window looks out on a big garden, which is used as a meeting place by all the neighbourhood cats. I like to stretch out on the veranda and watch them. I'm not sure how many of them get together, but this is one big gang of cats. They sunbathe in groups. I don't think they're too pleased to see me living here, but once when I put out an old chunk of cheese a few of them crept over and nibbled it. They'll probably be friends of mine before too long. There's one striped tom cat in the bunch with half-eaten ears. It's amazing how much he looks like my old dorm Head. I expect him to start raising the flag any day now. I'm kind of far from university here, but once I start my third year I won't have too many morning lectures, so it shouldn't be too bad. It may even be better with the time to read on the train. Now all I have to do is find some easy work out here that I can do three or four days a week. Then I can get back to my springwinding life. I don't want to rush, but April is a good time of year to start new things, and I can't help feeling that the best thing for us would be to 288

begin living together then. You could go back to university, too, if it worked out well. If there's a problem with us actually living together, I could find a flat for you in the neighbourhood. The most important thing is for us to be always near each other. It doesn't have to be spring, of course. If you think summer is better, that's fine by me, too. Just let me know what you're thinking, OK? I'm planning to put some extra time in at work for a while. To cover my moving expenses. I'm going to need a fair amount of money for one thing or another once I start living alone: pots and pans, dishes, stuff like that. I'll be free in March, though, and I definitely want to come to see you. What dates work best for you? I'll plan a trip to Kyoto then. I look forward to seeing you and hearing your answer. I spent the next few days buying the things I needed in the nearby Kichijoji shopping district and started cooking simple meals for myself at home. I bought some planks at a local timber yard and had them cut to size so I could make a desk for myself. I thought I could study on it and, for the time being, eat my meals there, too. I made some shelves and got in a good selection of spices. A white cat maybe six months old decided she liked me and started eating at my place. I called her Seagull. Once I had my place sorted out to some extent, I went into town and found a temporary job as a painter's assistant. I filled two solid weeks that way. The pay was good, but the work was murder, and the fumes made my head spin. Every day after work I'd eat at a cheap restaurant, wash it down with beer, go home and play with the cat, then sleep like a dead man. No answer came from Naoko during that time. I was in the thick of painting when Midori popped into my mind. I hadn't been in touch with her for nearly three weeks, I realized, and hadn't even told her I had moved. I had mentioned to her that I was thinking of moving, and she had said, \"Oh, really?\" and that was the last time we had talked. 289

I went to a phone box and dialled her number. The woman who answered was probably her sister. When I gave her my name, she said \"Just a minute\", but Midori never came to the phone. Then the sister, or whoever she was, got back on the line. \"Midori says she's too furious to talk to you. You just moved and never said a thing to her, right? Just disappeared and never told her where you were going, right? Well, now you've got her boiling mad. And once she gets mad, she stays that way. Like some kind of animal.\" \"Look, could you just put her on the phone? I can explain.\" \"She says she doesn't want to hear any explanations.\" \"Can I explain to you, then? I hate to do this to you, but could you just listen and tell her what I said?\" \"Not me! Do it yourself. What kind of man are you? It's your responsibility, so you do it, and do it right.\" It was hopeless. I thanked her and hung up. I really couldn't blame Midori for being angry. What with all the moving and fixing up and working for extra cash, I hadn't given her a second thought. Not even Naoko had crossed my mind the whole time. This was nothing new for me. Whenever I get involved in something, I shut out everything else. But then I began to think how I would have felt if the tables had been turned and Midori had moved somewhere without telling me where or getting in touch with me for three weeks. I would have been hurt - hurt badly, no doubt. No, we weren't lovers, but in a way we had opened ourselves to each other even more deeply than lovers do. The thought caused me a good deal of grief. What a terrible thing it is to wound someone you really care for - and to do it so unconsciously. As soon as I got home from work, I sat at my new desk and wrote to Midori. I told her how I felt as honestly as I could. I apologized, without explanations or excuses, for having been so careless and insensitive. I miss you, I wrote. I want to see you as soon as possible. I want you to see my new house. Please write to 290

me, I said, and sent the letter special delivery. The answer never came. This was the beginning of one weird spring. I spent the whole holiday waiting for letters. I couldn't take a trip, I couldn't go home to see my parents, I couldn't even take a part-time job because there was no telling when a letter might arrive from Naoko saying she wanted me to come and see her on such-and-such a date. Afternoons I would spend in the nearby shopping district in Kichijoji, watching double bills or reading in a jazz café. I saw no one and talked to almost no one. And once a week I would write to Naoko. I never suggested to her that I was hoping for an answer. I didn't want to pressure her in any way. I would tell her about my painting job, about Seagull, about the peach blossom in the garden, about the nice old lady who sold tofu, about the nasty old lady in the local restaurant, about the meals I was making for myself. But still, she never wrote. Whenever I was fed up reading or listening to records, I would work a little in the garden. From my landlord I borrowed a rake and broom and pruning shears and spent my time pulling weeds and trimming bushes. It didn't take much to make the garden look good. Once the owner invited me to join him for a cup of tea, so we sat on the veranda of the main house drinking green tea and munching on rice crackers, sharing small talk. After retirement, he had got a job with an insurance company, he said, but he had left that, too, after a couple of years, and now he was taking it easy. The house and land had been in the family for a long time, his children were grown-up and independent, and he could manage a comfortable old age without working. Which is why he and his wife were always travelling together. \"That's nice,\" I said. \"No it's not,\" he answered. \"Travelling is no fun. I'd much rather be working.\" He let the garden grow wild, he said, because there were no decent 291

gardeners in the area and because he had developed allergies that made it impossible for him to do the work himself. Cutting grass made him sneeze. When we had finished our tea, he showed me a storage shed and told me I could use anything I found inside, more or less by way of thanks for my gardening. \"We don't have any use for any of this stuff,\" he said, \"so feel free.\" And in fact the place was crammed with all kinds of things - an old wooden bath, a kids' swimming pool, baseball bats. I found an old bike, a handy-sized dining table with two chairs, a mirror, and a guitar. \"I'd like to borrow these if you don't mind,\" I said. \"Feel free,\" he said again. I spent a day working on the bike: cleaning the rust off, oiling the bearings, pumping up the tyres, adjusting the gears, and taking it to a bike repair shop to have a new gear cable installed. It looked like a different bike by the time I had finished. I cleaned a thick layer of dust off the table and gave it a new coat of varnish. I replaced the strings of the guitar and glued a section of the body that was coming apart. I took a wire brush to the rust on the tuning pegs and adjusted those. It wasn't much of a guitar, but at least I got it to stay in tune. I hadn't had a guitar in my hands since school, I realized. I sat on the porch and picked my way through The Drifters' \"Up on the Roof\" as well as I could. I was amazed to find I still remembered most of the chords. Next I took a few planks of wood and made myself a square letterbox. I painted it red, wrote my name on it, and set it outside my door. Up until 3 April, the only post that found its way to my box was something that had been forwarded from the dorm: a notice from the reunion committee of my school. A class reunion was the last thing I wanted to have anything to do with. That was the class I had been in with Kizuki. I threw it in the bin. I found a letter in the box on the afternoon of 4 April. It said Reiko Ishida on the back. I made a nice, clean cut across the seal with my 292

scissors and went out to the porch to read it. I had a feeling this was not going to be good news, and I was right. First Reiko apologized for making me wait so long for an answer. Naoko had been struggling to write me a letter, she said, but she could never seem to write one through to the end. I offered to send you an answer in her place, but every time I pointed out how wrong it was of her to keep you waiting, she insisted that it was far too personal a matter, that she would write to you herself, which is why I haven't written sooner. I'm sorry, really. I hope you can forgive me. I know you must have had a difficult month waiting for an answer, but believe me, the month has been just as difficult for Naoko. Please try to understand what she's been going through. Her condition is not good, I have to say in all honesty. She was trying her best to stand on her own two feet, but so far the results have not been good. Looking back, I see now that the first symptom of her problem was her loss of the ability to write letters. That happened around the end of November or beginning of December. Then she started hearing things. Whenever she would try to write a letter, she would hear people talking to her, which made it impossible for her to write. The voices would interfere with her attempts to choose her words. It wasn't all that bad until about the time of your second visit, so I didn't take it too seriously. For all of us here, these kinds of symptoms come in cycles, more or less. In her case, they got quite serious after you left. She is having trouble now just holding an ordinary conversation. She can't find the right words to speak, and that puts her into a terribly confused state - confused and frightened. Meanwhile, the \"things\" she's hearing are getting worse. We have a session every day with one of the specialists. Naoko and the doctor and I sit around talking and trying to find the exact part of her that's broken. I came up with the idea that it would be good to add 293

you to one of our sessions if possible, and the doctor was in favour of it, but Naoko was against it. I can tell you exactly what her reason was: \"I want my body to be clean of all this when I meet him.\" That was not the problem, I said to her; the problem was to get her well as quickly as possible, and I pushed as hard as I could, but she wouldn't change her mind. I think I once explained to you that this is not a specialized hospital. We do have medical specialists here, of course, and they provide effective treatments, but concentrated therapy is another matter. The point of this place is to create an effective environment in which the patient can treat herself or himself, and that does not, properly speaking, include medical treatment. Which means that if Naoko's condition grows any worse, they will probably have to transfer her to some other hospital or medical facility or what have you. Personally, I would find this very painful, but we would have to do it. That isn't to say that she couldn't come back here for treatment on a kind of temporary \"leave of absence\". Or, better yet, she could even be cured and finish with hospitals completely. In any case, we're doing everything we can, and Naoko is doing everything she can. The best thing you can do meanwhile is hope for her recovery and keep sending her those letters. It was dated 31 March. After I had read it, I stayed on the porch and let my eyes wander out to the garden, full now with the freshness of spring. An old cherry tree stood there, its blossoms nearing the height of their glory. A soft breeze blew, and the light of day lent its strangely blurred, smoky colours to everything. Seagull wandered over from somewhere, and after scratching at the boards of the veranda for a while, she stretched out next to me and fell asleep. I knew I should be doing some serious thinking, but I had no idea how to go about it. And, to tell the truth, thinking was the last thing I wanted to do. The time would come soon enough when I had no 294

choice in the matter, and when that time came I would take a good, long while to think things over. Not now, though. Not now. I spent the day staring at the garden, propped against a pillar and stroking Seagull. I felt completely drained. The afternoon deepened, twilight approached, and bluish shadows enveloped the garden. Seagull disappeared, but I went on staring at the cherry blossoms. In the spring gloom, they looked like flesh that had burst through the skin over festering wounds. The garden filled up with the sweet, heavy stench of rotting flesh. And that's when I thought of Naoko's flesh. Naoko's beautiful flesh lay before me in the darkness, countless buds bursting through her skin, green and trembling in an almost imperceptible breeze. Why did such a beautiful body have to be so ill? I wondered. Why didn't they just leave Naoko alone? I went inside and drew my curtains, but even indoors there was no escape from the smell of spring. It filled everything from the ground up. But the only thing the smell of spring brought to mind for me now was that putrefying stench. Shut in behind my curtains, I felt a violent loathing for spring. I hated what the spring had in store for me; I hated the dull, throbbing ache it aroused inside me. I had never hated anything in my life with such intensity. I spent three full days after that all but walking on the bottom of the sea. I could hardly hear what people said to me, and they had just as much trouble catching anything I had to say. My whole body felt enveloped in some kind of membrane, cutting off any direct contact between me and the outside world. I couldn't touch \"them\", and \"they\" couldn't touch me. I was utterly helpless, and as long as I remained in that state, \"they\" were unable to reach out to me. I sat leaning against the wall, staring up at the ceiling. When I felt hungry I would nibble anything within reach, drink some water, and when the sadness of it got to me, I'd knock myself out with whisky. I didn't bathe, I didn't shave. This is how the three days went by. 295

A letter came from Midori on 6 April. She invited me to meet her on campus and have lunch on the tenth when we had to enroll for lectures. I put off writing to you as long as I could, which makes us even, so let's make up. I have to admit it, I miss you. I read the letter again and again, four times all together, and still I couldn't tell what she was trying to say to me. What could it possibly mean? My brain was so fogged over, I couldn't find the connection from one sentence to the next. How would meeting her on enrolment day make us \"even\"? Why did she want to have \"lunch\" with me? I was really losing it. My mind had gone slack, like the soggy roots of a subterranean plant. But somehow I knew I had to snap out of it. And then those words of Nagasawa's came to mind: \"Don't feel sorry for yourself. Only arseholes do that.\" \"OK, Nagasawa. Right on,\" I heard myself thinking. I let out a sigh and got to my feet. I did my laundry for the first time in weeks, went to the public bath and shaved, cleaned my place up, shopped for food and cooked myself a decent meal for a change, fed the starving Seagull, drank only beer, and did 30 minutes of exercise. Shaving, I discovered in the mirror that I was becoming emaciated. My eyes were popping. I could hardly recognize myself. I went out the next morning on a longish bike ride, and after finishing lunch at home, I read Reiko's letter one more time. Then thought seriously about what I ought to do next. The main reason I had taken Reiko's letter so hard was that it had upset my optimistic belief that Naoko was getting better. Naoko herself had told me, \"My sickness is a lot worse than you think: it has far deeper roots.\" And Reiko had warned me there was no telling what might happen. Still, I had seen Naoko twice, and had gained the impression she was on the mend. I had assumed that the only problem was whether she could 296

regain the courage to return to the real world, and that if she managed to, the two of us could join forces and make a go of it. Reiko's letter smashed the illusory castle that I had built on that fragile hypothesis, leaving only a flattened surface devoid of feeling. I would have to do something to regain my footing. It would probably take a long time for Naoko to recover. And even then, she would no doubt be more debilitated and would have lost even more of her self confidence than ever. I would have to adapt myself to this new situation. As strong as I might become, though, it would not solve all the problems. I knew that much. But there was nothing else I could do: just keep my own spirits up and wait for her to recover. Hey, there, Kizuki, I thought. Unlike you, I've chosen to live - and to live the best I know how. Sure, it was hard for you. What the hell, it's hard for me. Really hard. And all because you killed yourself and left Naoko behind. But that's something I will never do. I will never, ever, turn my back on her. First of all, because I love her, and because I'm stronger than she is. And I'm just going to keep on getting stronger. I'm going to mature. I'm going to be an adult. Because that's what I have to do. I always used to think I'd like to stay 17 or 18 if I could. But not any more. I'm not a teenager any more. I've got a sense of responsibility now. I'm not the same person I was when we used to hang out together. I'm 20 now. And I have to pay the price to go on living. \"Shit, Watanabe, what happened to you?\" Midori asked. \"You're all skin and bones!\" \"That bad, huh?\" \"Too much you-know-what with that married girlfriend of yours, I bet.\" I smiled and shook my head. \"I haven't slept with a girl since the 297

beginning of October.\" \"Whew! That can't be true. We're talking six months here!\" \"You heard me.\" \"So how did you lose so much weight?\" \"By growing up,\" I said. Midori put her hands on my shoulders and looked me in the eye with a twisted scowl that soon turned into a sweet smile. \"It's true,\" she said. \"Something's kind of different. You've changed.\" \"I told you, I grew up. I'm an adult now.\" \"You're fantastic, the way your brain works,\" she said as though genuinely impressed. \"Let's eat. I'm starving.\" We went to a little restaurant behind the literature department. I ordered the lunch special and she did the same. \"Hey, Watanabe, are you mad at me?\" \"What for?\" \"For not answering you, just to get even. Do you think I shouldn't have done that? I mean, you apologized and everything.\" \"Yeah, but it was my fault to begin with. That's just how it goes.\" \"My sister says I shouldn't have done it. That it was too unforgiving, too childish.\" \"Yeah, but it made you feel better, didn't it, getting even like that?\" \"Uh-huh.\" \"OK, then, that's that.\" \"You are forgiving, aren't you?\" Midori said. \"But tell me the truth, Watanabe, you haven't had sex for six months?\" \"Not once.\" \"So, that time you put me to bed, you must have really wanted it bad.\" \"Yeah, I guess I did.\" \"But you didn't do it, did you?\" \"Look, you're the best friend I've got now,\" I said. \"I don't want to lose you.\" \"You know, if you had tried to force yourself on me that time, I wouldn't have been able to resist, I was so exhausted.\" \"But I was too big and hard,\" I said. 298

Midori smiled and touched my wrist. \"A little before that, I decided I was going to believe in you. A hundred per cent. That's how I managed to sleep like that with total peace of mind. I knew I'd be all right, I'd be safe with you there. And I did sleep like a log, didn't I?\" \"You sure did.\" \"On the other hand, if you were to say to me, \"Hey, Midori, let's do it. Then everything'll be great,' I'd probably do it with you. Now, don't think I'm trying to seduce you or tease you. I'm just telling you what's on my mind, with total honesty.\" \"I know, I know.\" While we ate lunch, we showed each other our enrolment cards and found that we had enrolled for two of the same courses. So I'd be seeing her twice a week at least. With that out of the way, Midori told me about her living arrangements. For a while, neither she nor her sister could get used to living in a flat - because it was too easy, she said. They had always been used to running around like mad every day, taking care of sick people, helping out at the bookshop, and one thing or another. \"We're finally getting used to it, though,\" she said. \"This is the way we should have been living all along - not having to worry about anyone else's needs, just stretching out any way we felt like it. It made us both nervous at first, as if our bodies were floating a few inches off the ground. It didn't seem real, like real life couldn't actually be like that. We were both tense, as though everything was about to be tipped upside down any minute.\" \"A couple of worriers,\" I said with a smile. \"Well, it's just that life has been so cruel to us until now,\" Midori said. \"But that's OK. We're going to get back every thing it owes us.\" \"I bet you are,\" I said, \"knowing you. But tell me, what's your sister doing these days?\" \"A friend of hers opened this swanky accessory shop a little while 299

ago. My sister helps out there three times a week. Otherwise, she's studying cookery, going on dates with her fiancé, going to the cinema, vegging out, and just enjoying life. Midori then asked about my new life. I gave her a description of the layout of the house, and the big garden and Seagull the cat, and my landlord. \"Are you enjoying yourself?\" she asked. \"Pretty much,\" I said. \"Could have fooled me,\" said Midori. \"Yeah, and it's springtime, too,\" I said. \"And you're wearing that cool pullover your girlfriend knitted for you.\" With a sudden shock I glanced down at my wine-coloured jumper. \"How did you know?\" \"You're as honest as they come,\" said Midori. \"I'm guessing, of course! Anyway, what's wrong with you?\" \"I don't know. I'm trying to whip up a little enthusiasm.\" \"Just remember, life is a box of chocolates.\" I shook my head a few times and looked at her. \"Maybe I'm not so smart, but sometimes I don't know what on earth you're talking about.\" \"You know, they've got these chocolate assortments, and you like some but you don't like others? And you eat all the ones you like, and the only ones left are the ones you don't like as much? I always think about that when something painful comes up. \"Now I just have to polish these off, and everything'll be OK.' Life is a box of chocolates.\" \"I suppose you could call it a philosophy.\" \"It's true, though. I've learned it from experience.\" We were drinking our coffee when two girls came in. Midori seemed to know them from university. The three of them compared enrolment cards and talked about a million different things: \"What kind of mark 300